The Washington State Liquor Control Board sent letters between Feb 21-25 giving notice that cannabis retail applicants have 30 days to finalize their paperwork and property. That means the deadline is Monday, March 23 – Thursday, March 27 for most applicants. Those who are in non-compliant locations will be excluded from the lottery.

If you still do not have a compliant location, and worry that you will be excluded from the lottery, we can help. We have identified 502-friendly landlords with compliant locations in Seattle, King County, and other retail lottery jurisdictions, and can help secure your place in the lottery. Pricing and terms vary for this service, but we can likely arrange an agreement for space (and investment capital, if necessary) that will please you.

Contact Ben at 206-335-9214 or ben@hemp.net if you’re about to be knocked out of the retail lottery.

SEATTLE, WA — State regulators have allocated 21 legal pot shops to Seattle, and hundreds of applicants hope to win a lottery for those lucrative licenses. But the majority of them will be disqualified, says map maker Ben Livingston.

“People who thought they bought a ticket in the Seattle cannabis lottery may be surprised, because over half of them won’t qualify for the drawing,” says Livingston, who is Director of the Center for Legal Cannabis, a cannabis project incubator.

This week, Center for Legal Cannabis launched its first spin-off company, called Canna Zoning. The startup creates zoning maps for the cannabis industry, offers individual property investigations, and provides I-502 business and land use consulting.

Canna Zoning released a white paper titled “Pot Lottery Numbers,” which calculates that 52% of all Seattle pot shop applicants are in locations that are within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, libraries and other forbidden features. With 413 applications vying for 21 retail cannabis stores in Seattle, the probability of procuring a license is around 5%. But Livingston’s analysis puts that number closer to 12% for qualified applicants.

The Washington State Liquor Control Board has given hopeful cannabis retailers 30 days to submit final paperwork to the agency in preparation for the lottery. “At such a critical stage in this new industry, this report clearly shows how important in-depth zoning research is for the cannabis industry,” Livingston says. “Most of these people are throwing away their money.”